


Only Human

by Kylian



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Actually Gets One, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, I'm Bad At Summaries, Oz didn't sign up for this, Oz needs a hug, Spoilers V6C3, mentions of OCs - Freeform, so lay off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylian/pseuds/Kylian
Summary: After Jinn finishes telling his story, Oz is ready for anything - anything except what happens.Spoilers for V6C3: The Lost Fable
Relationships: Ozpin & Oscar Pine, Ozpin & Ruby Rose, Ozpin & Team RWBY, Qrow Branwen & Ozpin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 153





	Only Human

**Author's Note:**

> So... this fic has a bit of a wild story behind it. To sum it up, when I first watched V6, I was about an hour post-op from surgery. And then I was on pain meds for about a week, so the actual details sorta got lost in the in-between. 
> 
> So yesterday I'm working on a much longer fic, and for the sake of continuity in Oz's background, I rewatched _The Lost Fable_ and _So That's How It Is_ , and got so viscerally mad at the way everyone reacts to Jinn's story that I ended up spending a few hours writing this piece of self indulgent should-have-been.
> 
> The characters are probably a little OOC, but I honestly like the way it turned out, and I'm thinking about rewriting part of it as the basis of a longer multi-chapter canon divergence fic that would explore what happens next.
> 
> For the sake of clarity, because the whole thing with Ozma/Ozpin/Oscar is really confusing to write: Ruby refers to Oz as Ozpin because that's the name she knows him by best; Oz refers to himself as Oz (the combination of souls that he's merged with, not including Oscar); Oscar is treated as his own entity within the narrative.
> 
> This is unbetad, any mistakes are my own.
> 
> Anyways, that was a really long note. Sorry 'bout that. I hope you enjoy my self-indulgent adventure in 'what might have been'!
> 
> And, if you're curious, I was listening to _Miracle_ from the Volume 6 soundtrack on a loop while I wrote most of this.

Only Human

He’d been a playwright once, long ago. In a time when war had torn the land to pieces, and all the hope that was left to the people of Remnant - all that remained of that bygone era from which he hailed - were legend turned drama. In a time when it was too difficult altogether to remember even the echo of peace.

At that point, all that Oz had been able to give the people - in his own grief for a forgotten past and a forgone conclusion too long ignored - were tales of heroes; warriors who’d once held the world together where the cracks formed and threatened fracture.

Happily ever after… what a gut-wrenchingly tragic lie that was. Of anyone, he was proof of it. The great deception, spread and shared among all who lived and breathed, so that some good might come of all the loss and senseless destruction, and Oz didn’t have the heart to break the illusion.

So he lied - beautiful lies became the foundation of unity, victory, and righteousness - as he perched in a clocktower on pillars of salt and locked himself there. His solitude was just another lie, another way to assuage his guilt as spirits whispered in his ears. 

Anything to hide his sordid tale from scrutiny. To protect this delicate peace that had settled upon the people of Remnant in the wake of division and bloodsoaked sand.

So he lied. And perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps it was pointless. But of all things, Oz thought that he had a right to be selfish about his past. About his tale: lost to time and the destruction of the First Humans. It was _his_ where nothing else was, not his body, not his mind, not his task, not his guilt, but-

He’d thought - foolishly, yes, but what was he other than an old fool? - that he could keep the memory of Ozma (bright, naive, pure Ozma, who had not yet been jaded by the betrayal of his love or the cruelty of the gods in setting an impossible task) to himself.

He’d thought that this particular drama was not one that would ever be subject to scrutiny. A legend left untold was nothing more than dust on the wind, after all.

(Was it really so bad to keep the sour truth that he was nothing more than human, just like them, to himself? To give them hope, however false, for as long as it was possible.)

There were few things capable of wounding the immortal more than past trauma brought to present, as though by some new torture of the gods.

He’d never thought to wonder at the critics who would narrow their eyes in judgement at this play. It wasn’t one he’d ever written. Too afraid that a script would be found in the rubble of war and made gospel along with so much of his life.

But as Jinn finished telling the tale - his tale, and Salem’s, no one else’s, not to hear nor to share - he felt Oscar’s knees buckle under his weight in some parody of a bow, falling along with the proverbial curtain as reality caught back up with them.

Tears that might not have been all his own (though why Oscar would share in this pain of old wounds rubbed to bleeding, Oz wasn’t sure) rolled down his face. Eyes wide in remembered loss and anguish. In the visceral reminder of broken trust and love twisted into blades.

He’d stolen a thousand lives, and if Jinn was right, he’d steal a thousand more. There was no end. Not for him. (For _them_ , because Oz was never alone. He had to drag others into an old feud.)

(Did he even deserve the peace commanded by death, after all he’d done? After all the lives - young, hopeful, optimistic, undeserving of the fate they would meet - sacrificed in a pointless war.

Just because a broken prophet refused to accept the truth.)

Oz didn’t want to look up. Couldn’t help but remember the last person trusted with the Truth, in all of its proper capitalisation. Blue-green eyes bright with anger, vitriol sharp as knives. The emptiness of death hand in hand with the agonizing chasm left by a once-friendship not strong enough to stand up to his secrets and his lies.

He didn’t want to look up only to see that same murderous intent glaring back at him once more. And Oscar was curled up - arms around his legs, head buried in his knees - in their shared mindscape, wracked with echoes of agony that _wasn’t his to bear_.

(To live a thousand and one lives, one had first to die a thousand deaths. Some were easily passed off as the nightmares of an overactive imagination, others… less so. And waking remembrance, not at all. No one, least of all a _child_ , deserved such a burden.)

 _I’m sorry,_ he whispered in their mind, miserable and overflowing with guilt. Aching inside and out at the recollection of a dozen lives stolen by a red eyed monster of his own making.

(Or had she always had that viciously destructive intent within her? Had he simply been too awed by the light she brought to his life to notice it had blinded him?)

There was no response, but Oz didn’t expect one. 

An eternity passed in the shocked silence left behind by revelation.

An eternity in the space of a second.

Oz raised Oscar’s hazel eyes, prepared for condemnation, for persecution in the face of betrayal. For anger in flying fists and agony in whispers of severed ties and broken bonds.

He was prepared for anything, he thought. Not… happy about it. Readying himself to hide away (like a coward, yes. He could admit that), deep within Oscar Pine’s subconscious. 

He’d thought to ready himself for everything - every variety of rejection under the broken moon. 

Yet Oz was utterly bowled over by what he saw.

There was fear, yes, but not in the way he’d thought to expect. A searing terror in their haunted eyes and drooped posture, but it was fear that spoke of a slow suspicion confirmed. As though the truths they had fought for had done nothing but bring unspoken knowledge into the limelight. 

So, yes, they were afraid. But it was a secondary thing, hidden in the shadows of their faces and slump of their spines. More immediate by far was _worry_. No, concern. 

Miss Rose moved first, and Oz flinched - still flayed and raw and unbalanced from watching his life played back in technicolor - the instinctual cringe too ingrained to be suppressed, even if he’d been in the mind to do so.

She stopped, froze with one hand outstretched, silver eyes shining with something unreadable before it seemed that motion caught up with her all at once.

A profound sadness - deeper than the lakes of destruction, Oz would hazard to say - filled that silver gaze, and with it a shape that he recognized from a thousand halting glances in the mirror: regret.

It took a mere moment for him to register all this, and then Ozpin found himself with an armful of Ruby Rose, black-red hair soft against his face even as it darkened from the icy stream of tears pouring from his own eyes.

Barely a whisper against his neck, Miss Rose muttered, “I’m _so, so sorry_.”

And somehow he'd forgotten, in his immortality and all the isolation it implied, what understanding - empathy - was like. The shock of selfless comfort tinged in melancholy guilt so foreign that Oz truly didn’t know what to do with it.

(Oscar's warm presence in their shared mind grew somehow more despondent at that thought.)

His muscles relaxed into her embrace, yet another learned response, though he was not the source of this one. A natural reaction to comfort offered; to touch meant for something besides causing harm.

Stunned confusion took root, growing in concert with long-buried guilt. Despite sense and reason, though, Oz buried his head into the crook of her neck and murmured, voice cracking with tears and hoarse with regret, "You have nothing to apologize for, Miss Rose. I-"

He was cut off by an angry sniff followed by the Silver Eyed Warrior's furious stage-whisper, "No, Professor I'm sorry. I'm sorry for taking a story we didn't have any right to, I was angry but I _didn't know_ ," another sniff and she was crying in earnest, holding him tightly as though he'd vanish if she dared let go, her next words were a deflated, desperate murmur, "I didn't know, but that's no excuse for making you relive that."

"I _lied to you_." Oz said regretfully, quietly, as another pair of arms wrapped around him - this one familiar - long ago immortalized in crystal memory - though so much larger against Oscar's small frame, "Qrow…"

"It's okay Oz."

There was a certain solace in that. A comfort in the rough cadence of Qrow's voice. In the acceptance of the one person among them truly capable of wounding his old, scarred soul.

It was an illusion broken too soon by a shout of fear-turned-hopeless-anger, "Okay?" A derisive laugh, "How is any of this okay, Uncle Qrow? He lied about so much, how can yo-"

"ENOUGH!" Ruby was on her feet again shouting desperately in a flurry of rose petals, leaving Oz to lean against Qrow, who tightened his arms in silent reassurance as his dark haired niece continued, "That's enough! Yang, you're mad, and you're scared, and I get it. I am too. But so is he! If Jinn has proven anything, it's that Ozpin is human. Just like us. He didn't ask for any of this!”

Young Miss Belladonna stood silently for a moment - in apparent indecision - at Miss Xiao Long’s side, before moving to join Miss Rose in solidarity - a quiet show of support.

Miss Xiao Long opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could say anything, her sister forged onwards, fierce despite the tears still on her face, “I don’t agree with what he did, but I understand why he did it. An unbeatable enemy would be enough to scare any of us; hope has power. It brings people together. And if hope is all that we have, then so be it. Just because we can’t destroy Salem that doesn’t mean we can’t stop her. This doesn’t change _anything_.

“You’re hurt because he lied, but we all lie. People are flawed, and sometimes we mess up. Sometimes we have to make choices, and leaders have to make more than most. And you’re scared because he’s just as powerless as we are against Salem - because he’s just as afraid of what that means. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. It definitely doesn’t mean we fight amongst ourselves. 

“He didn’t ask for the fate of humanity to be placed in his hands, but it was. He didn’t ask for dozens of deaths, only to learn that it was all for nothing, but that’s what he got. He didn’t ask to be betrayed by the people closest to him, but that’s what happened. We’ve only known him for like, a year, Yang. Of course he doesn’t trust us! And what have we done to earn it, anyways? Other than demand answers he doesn’t want to give. 

“So Ozpin doesn’t know everything, so he doesn't have an endgame here. So what? Do you just want to stop? To give up, after everything we’ve been through? You always said you wanted adventure, what greater adventure is there than this one? _Please_ , Yang. We can do this without you… but I really, _really_ don’t want to.”

Throughout this heartfelt speech, Miss Rose had gone from upset to outright antagonistic to self deprecating all the way back to achingly sad, and _tired_. The sort of exhaustion that Oz was painfully familiar with, that sank into your bones with singular purpose, pulling you down until you craved the night’s peace. 

( _These woods are lovely, dark and deep,_

_But I have promises to keep,_

_And miles to go before I sleep_

_And miles to go before I sleep._ **(1)** )

(Somehow, along the way, Oz had forgotten that he wasn't the only one who felt that kind of fatigue. That he wasn't the only one forced to push onwards, despite. That he had, with the arrangement of four simple letters, resigned Ruby Rose to such a fate.)

But even through the wavering of her shoulders under a weight so difficult to bear, Miss Rose shone bright with the Silver of fierce protectiveness.

What Oz had done to earn such a thing, he could not be sure. An old fool to the last, who'd given up so long ago it was barely a memory swirling in the snowstorm that raged around the mismatched group. What had he done to earn her dedication?

Miss Schnee huffed, crossing her arms over her chest in fond exasperation, pale blue eyes warm with affection; all agitation seemingly drained away by her partner's characteristic reckless abandon. 

A soft smile touched her lips as she dragged a stunned Miss Xiao Long - who still managed to project reluctant pride at the surety with which her sister had fought for her ideals - to join the rest of them.

“You’re too nice, sis. But…” Miss Xiao Long paused, discerning lilac taking in distraught hazel, running over the decisively collapsed form of Oscar Pine, “I’m with you. All of you. I won’t apologize for wanting the truth, but I guess I see where you’re coming from.”

Her next words were for Oz, “You didn’t have to lie to us, you know. We can handle the truth. I see why you did it, but don’t blindside us again like this. We need to know what we’re up against to have even a shot.” The warning wasn’t lost on him, distrust finding its final resting place in acceptance rather than in malice, but Oz was too busy gaping at the kindness - the out-of-nowhere welcome that these remarkable people were offering him.

A chance to work _with_ them. To build a plan together, rather than hide in the shadows or, as may be, the confines of the unexplored crevices of a shared mind - the only place Oz might have found shelter from their rejection.

And it was Ruby Rose who inspired that in them. The light of her eyes barely the surface of her brilliance. There was a certain pride - undeserved, surely, for what had he brought to his students but misfortune and despair? - in watching her wrap grateful arms around her sister and trade affectionate quips with Miss Schnee. The pride of a teacher watching his student grow. 

But Oz had not been their teacher since Beacon’s fall - a lifetime ago, literally - and the man who had stood, calm and knowing and serene, sipping hot cocoa from chipped ceramic as the chaotic frenzy of youth had whipped up a storm around him was gone. Had died surrounded by the ruins of his most closely guarded secrets.

Within their mind, Oscar - having finally regained his bearings - remarked in obstinance to rival Miss Rose’s own, _“You know, if you’re going to blame yourself for making her grow up so young, you have to take credit for everything she’s gained from leadership.”_

_Her bonds are her own._

_“And yet if it weren’t for ‘the arrangement of four simple letters’ we’d be looking at an entirely different team. Or no team at all.”_

The boy leaned against an invisible boundary, arms crossed smugly over his chest.

 _No wonder you and Miss Rose get along,_ Oz retaliated. In their shared mindscape, Oscar’s cheeks flushed furiously, embarrassment covering, for a moment, the shades of blue sorrow that warped the ‘scape around them.

_“What are you talking about? I don’t- Lay off- **You need some freaking hobbies, Oz.** ”_

And Oz - still petrified; held in fear’s icy grip, unsure whether to trust the warmth offering to free him - laughed. 

It was too sharp a sound; filled with sharp edges rusty with age - the ones he’d tried so desperately to hide - exposed to the tundra’s chill, but it was genuine. And silent streams of crystal tears were replaced by a full-bodied, bracing laughter that rang with relief, if nothing else.

He stood, legs left shaky in the absence of the adrenaline that had kept them steady on the train, looking around at the faces which surrounded him. 

Ruby, grinning a small, hesitant grin - entirely too fragile, leaving all of Oz’s minds in agreement that it ought to be guarded until her confidence strengthened its foundations.

Blake smirked slightly, a wicked curve to one side of her lips, despite the desponcence that came with new-old fears brought to focus. Her team’s new tentative optimism contagious.

Weiss, who gave him a nod. Qrow, who had yet to move, still allowing him the physical support of a friend who Oz couldn’t think of what he had ever done to earn.

Miss Xiao Long gave him a hard pat on the shoulder as she passed, leaving the wizard stumbling at the unexpected force.

“Well,” an unfamiliar voice broke in merrily, “that was heartwarming. But I think we ought to get out of this storm, don’t you? It shouldn’t be that far to the nearest village.”

Startled, Oz’s sight fell upon an old woman with cybernetic eyes and a confidence in the wilderness that could only belong to a trained warrior.

It wasn’t an ending, not by a long shot. 

The curtain dangled still, held up by softly aging golden ropes. But for the first time in too many years by far to count, a hopelessly lost soul allowed himself to see a light promising that one _would_ come, one day. That he would not be left alone to recite the same lines again and again and again until destruction was too tempting a prospect to turn away from.

The light of the Elder Brother laid in Miss Rose, and perhaps that light could shine upon some undiscovered pathway; could show them all the way.

Perhaps all that was needed was a little acceptance, and a few sets of fresh eyes. And yes, it would sting for a time, this reopening of old wounds that never healed right, but - to his own surprise - Oz found that he shared their faith that it was worth it.

If these remarkable, brilliant youthful souls could see something worth redeeming in someone like him, then anything was possible. They just needed the right perspective.

And perhaps he too had long forgotten that victory was in a smaller, more honest soul.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading!
> 
>  **(1)** _Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening_ by Robert Frost.
> 
> Let me know if anyone would be interested in seeing what happens next! I hope you liked it!
> 
> (Also, yes, they were justifiably angry in canon, but I think that most of their resentment came from the fact that Oz left them without any clear path or goal or so much as a by your leave. They all reacted too strongly, and Oscar definetly didn't deserve to be dragged into it. So. Yeah. I hope y'all like it!)
> 
> Cheers!  
> \- Ky


End file.
